By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

Reviewed by: Michael Moss, Department of General and Celtic Linguistics,University of Gdansk.

Synopsis This book presents a generative analysis of complex verb structures inHungarian, Dutch and German using an extended model of functionalprojections and what the authors describe as a 'minimalist' approach.Complex verbs in these languages are understood to be the 'bunches' of verbsthat group together at the end of sentences classically known from German.The analysis covers Hungarian in detail and uses essentially the same modelto cover German and Dutch without going into such great detail. The mainphenomenon being studied is presented in the fact that the followingsentences are all considered 'well-formed' in Hungarian:

1. [Nem] fogok be menni. [not] I-will in to go I will [not] go in.

2. a. [Nem] fogok akarni be menni. [not] I-will to want in to go I will [not] want to go in.b. [Nem] fogok be menni akarni. [not] I-will in to go to want I will [not] want to go in.

3. a. [Nem] fogok kezdeni akarni be menni. [not] I-will to begin to want in to go I will [not] want to begin to go in. b. [Nem] fogok kezdeni be menni akarni. [not] I-will to begin in to go to want I will [not] want to begin to go in. c. [Nem] fogok be menni akarni kezdeni. [not] I-will in to go to want to begin I will [not] want to begin to go in.

While the following sentences are NOT 'well-formed':

4. *[Nem] fogok menni be. [not] I-will to go in I will [not] go in.

5. a. *[Nem] fogok kezdeni be akarni menni. [not] I-will to begin in to want to go I will [not] want to go in. b. *[Nem] fogok akarni be menni kezdeni. [not] I-will to want in to go to begin I will [not] want to go in. c. *[Nem] fogok akarni kezdeni be menni. [not] I-will to want to begin in to go I will [not] want to go in.

From the patterning seen in the data the authors conclude that there is akind of 'leap frog' effect occurring during the derivation of the sentence.That is, the underlying form of sentence (3.a.) is:

6. a. [Nem] fogok kezdeni akarni menni be. [not] I-will to begin to want to go in I will [not] want to begin to go in.

The element 'be' (in) leap-frogs to a position above 'menni' forming thewell-formed sentence in (3.a.). According to this analysis this model, 'be menni' is now a cluster thatcannot be broken up. As such, if it were now to move it would move to aposition above the next verb 'akarni' (to begin) forming sentence (3.b.),and so on. Apparently the last step in the chain in which the whole cluster'be menni akarni kezdeni' moves above 'fogok' (will) is invisible, because'fogok' must move to Case, T and Agr positions beyond the 'reach' of theverbal complex. The various word orders seen in (1), (2) and (3) are due tothe interaction of movement options during the derivation. This is achievedby using two mechanisms: remnant movement and stacking positions, which willbe discussed in the critical part of this review. German and Dutch are treated using the same underlying structure andmechanisms. The difference being that both of these languages have filtersimposing a limit on the internal complexity of constituents allowed to move.That is, only simple or in more traditional terminology 'light' elements canmove.

Critical Review When I got this book, I was truly looking forward to reading about thenew developments in 'complex verb' structures. Both of the authors are wellknown for introducing new and important analyses and procedures into themodel of generative grammar. My expectations were that this book wouldprovide insights into how multiple verb structures and their derivations areanalyzed. After reading the book however, I feel that the main questionsconcerning word order in verbal complexes remain a challenge. While theanalysis proposed in this book is both interesting and innovative, severaltechnical and theoretical problems force me to question their adequacy. Twomain problems made the book questionable for me. First, the book wastechnically difficult to read for the following reasons:

7. a. the argument is not developed in a linear form; b. the concepts used are often partially or poorly defined, c. the diagrams are incomplete and as such are difficult to analyze.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I found the 'technology' used tosupport the authors' arguments was not well defined and it's use not welldefended, this is a serious problem when introducing new elements into atheory. I will go through these criticisms point by point. Many times in the book, a point is made briefly, with the explanationthat more detail will follow in sections to come. The problem is that whenyou finally get to that point, you have to go back to the earlier example toclarify its significance. Furthermore, since the reader is unable to fullyunderstand the reference when it is introduced (before the full argument ispresented), it is hard to follow the train of thought. I find books in whicheach conclusion is presented in a linear fashion, building on theconclusions made before it are clearer and have greater impact. This book uses quite a bit of 'technology' to explain the derivation ofword order. However, much of the technology such as remnant movement,licensing positions and stacking positions is poorly defined. Furthermore,many times the reader is simply referred to other works which reportedlydiscuss this technology in detail. This is the case with VMs or verbalmodifiers. VMs are introduced on page 17, but are defined on page 20, andthere the definition is only vaguely referent: &quot;All of these expressionshave been dubbed 'verbal modifiers' (VM) in recent Hungarian descriptiveliterature. For ease of pre-theoretical reference, we adopt this coverterm.&quot; This is unfortunate. I feel that a work should be as self-containedas possible. It is very difficult to really evaluate an analysis if thedefinitions and concepts are not included in the book itself. Next, the authors assume that there are many functional projections aboveVP, and at the beginning of the volume there is a diagram showing what theypropose to be a 'standard' universal set of functional projections. However,this standard set is not followed during the rest of the book, and almostall derivations are diagrammed piece by piece, each diagram showing one ortwo projections at most. Since the standard set of projections is modifiedfor the following analysis, it is difficult to follow how the derivation isdeveloping in the diagrams which only show one or two steps in thederivation. This problem is increased when combined with the manner in whichthese new projections are defined, as discussed above. These three issues add up to make the book and its ideas unfortunatelydifficult to follow. Now I will discuss the technology used at the core of the authors'analysis showing how it was defined and its use defended. The analysispresented is heavily based on the assumption that Functional Projections(generally non-lexical projections responsible for tense, agreement and Caseassignment which as a group dominate the VP structure) are 'cheap' meaningthat they do not cost much in terms of the derivation, and as a result manyof them can be and are used. The authors introduce several new universalfunctional projections such as PredP, RefP, DistP, FP, LP, InfP as well aslanguage specific phrases such as IsP for Hungarian. Furthermore a new typeof '+' phrase (+P) such as VP+, InfP+ are introduced as elements whichimmediately dominate VP and InfP+ and attract elements which would normallyhave landed in the [Spec VP] or [Spec InfP] positions for Spec-headagreement. The need for the +Ps (reminiscent of VP* from the Koopman andSportiche version of the VP internal subject hypothesis (Koopman andSportiche 1991)) arises mainly due to the adoption of the 'GeneralizedDoubly Filled Comp Filter which reads:

8. No projection may have both an overt specifier and an overt head at the end of the derivation (pg. 40).

As such, agreement cannot occur in the Spec-head configuration, becauseone of these positions must be empty by spell-out. The answer proposed inthis book is to postulate a projection which occurs 'beyond' the XP node buthas (seemingly) the same categorical features. This really just seems to bea way of producing Chomsky's (or Gazdar's) multiple-specifier configurationswithout referring to Chomsky (1995) (or Gazdar (1982)). As such, the +Pscreate a position into which an element may move, but justification of thistype of phrase is far from obvious. LPs or licensing positions are similar in this respect. They areintroduced on page 39, where we find: 'We are led to assume that botharguments and adjuncts have their own licensing positions (to be notated asLP(xp)) and move into the m as soon as possible.' Apparently, LPs are'motivated by Case and other feature checking positions' (pg. 43). It is notclear what these LPs do, or how they come into the derivation. No cleardefinition is given, and no defense of their existence is offered. Yet theyare a central part of the book's analysis. Next, we have 'stacking positions' which are also labeled (LP) to &quot;avoida proliferation of labels&quot; (pg. 43). Apparently stacking positions occur inthe derivation to preserve word order: &quot;movement into them [stackingposition LPs] is constrained by the convention that it must replicate thealready existing linear order of the pertinent XPs&quot; (pg. 44). I thought thatthe derivation was supposed to explain linear order phenomena. How is itthat the linear order is now supposed to determine structural projections?While the authors themselves are hesitant about stacking positions sayingthat they do not seem to be in the spirit of the 'minimal analysis', theyoffer the following defense for using them in the derivation: &quot;^�since it ispossible to employ them [stacking positions] in a completely mindless,mechanical fashion, we choose to live with them as a provisional solutionthat we hope will give way to a more insightful one&quot; (pg. 44). This does notseem to be adequate defense for an element which is central to a derivation. These weak points in the book's organization and argumentation made itfrustrating to read and difficult to evaluate. Having said that, the book does present quite a large variety of datawith lengthy derivations of several types of commonly found sentences. Ifone is familiar with the literature on Hungarian verb complexes it will nodoubt be of interest. It is also worth pointing out the value of an analysisthat can explain word order in Hungarian and Germanic sentences. Such ageneralization that shows similarities in seemingly very different languagesis surely a step in the right direction. In summary, I found the book disappointing. MIT's Current Studies inLinguistics series usually brings out titles that are of general interest tolinguists, and that can be read and appreciated by specialists andnon-specialists alike. The problems discussed above make the work not onlydifficult to read, but also, difficult to evaluate in terms of validity.

The reviewer:My name is Michael Moss, I am currently writing a doctorate at theUniversity of Gdansk. My interests research interests include: theta-roleand case assignment, agreement phenomena, and subcategorization frames ingenerative grammar.